al-Kindi

Al-Kindi

The father of Arab Philosophy

• In the 820s, a young Al-Kindi traveled to the famed capital of Baghdad to complete his studies in philosophy, logic and Islamic law. His time spent and experiences gained in the medieval multicultural metropolis would ultimately set the foundations for a diverse and eventful scholarly career.

• Exploring in lustrous prose disciplines as disparate as meteorology to music what Al-Kindi left for those who succeeded him was a rich and varied canon of philosophical and scientific insights all of which would inspire more specialized experts in Al-Kindi's varied areas of interest to iterate and advance his inventive ideas into more complete theories.

• It is through this role as the inaugural pioneer of philosophical thought in the Medieval Arab world that Al-Kindi is now called the father of Arab Philosophy.

Personal life

• Al-Kindi was born in the Abbasid Caliphate's former capital Kufah in the year 801 ca as the son of its governor, Ishaq bin Sabah. He grew there and there got his first education.
• He then moved to Baghdad to complete his studies in Islamic law, philosophy and logic. Facilitated by both the privilege of being born in an aristocratic family and his undeniable talent, al-Kindi experienced a rapid rise in the ranks of the abbasid caliphate, where he prospered under the caliphs al-Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim.
• Thanks to his learning ability and aptitude for study, al-Ma'mun destined him to the House of Wisdom.

Personal life

• After the death of al-Mu'tasim and the rise to the power of Al-Mutawakkil (a very orthodox Sunni caliph), al-Kindi and all the non-Sunni muslim people were violently persecuted -perhaps due to his favorable tendencies towards Mu'tazilism-, at the point that al-Kindi's library was temporarily confiscated.

• After his death, al-Kindi's philosophical work was soon forgotten, and many of his works were lost even to later Islamic scholars and historians.

Al-Kindi's thought

• Even if the majority of his works were lost throughout history, 242 of his texts survived.

• Al-kindi's first major contribution to the House of Wisdom was leading the translation of greek works and writing a plethora of commentaries after discussing with the other scholars.
• His frequent contact with Greek works allowed him to familiarize himself with Aristotle's rational philosophical process.

Al'Kindi's thought

Science of Kalam

• He studied the Science of Kalam, giving a philosophical formulation to some of the basic tenets of the rationally oriented group of theologians, the Mu'tazila.
• Al-Kindi worked to find a balance between reason and revelation. He believed that reason and faith weren’t opposing ideas, but rather worked together to give us knowledge, rejecting pure rationalists who saw faith as a useless item as well as criticizing those who denied any form of knowledge outside of revelation

Al-Kindi's thought : neoplatonism

• The idea that the universe was not eternal, was a firmly held belief in the Aristotelian and Platonic view. For al- Kindi, the notion which states that the universe simply goes on and on into infinity with no beginning and no end was nonsensical.

• He believed that God was the ultimate source of everything, and the universe derived from God through a series of emanations.

• According to his perspective, there is a hierarchical order of beings, with God at the top as the Absolute One, from which emanate the Intelligences, souls, and finally, matter. The Intelligences act as intermediaries between God and the material world because they are the channels for the actions of God itself.

• Al-Kindi considered knowledge and reason essential tools to approach God. He also proposed that knowledge of the natural sciences could lead to a deeper understanding of divine will and the order of the universe.

Al-Kindi's thought

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY

• Al-Kindi declared his law of terrestrial gravity:

'All terrestrial objects are attracted towards the center of the Earth.'

• Al-Kindi's view of the solar system derives from that of Ptolemy, who places Earth at the center of a series of concentric spheres containing the known celestial bodies (the planets Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and the stars). In one of his treatises on the subject, he states that these bodies are rational entities, whose circular motion obeys and honors God

ALCHEMY

As an advanced chemist, he opposed alchemy and disputed the myth that a simple metal could transform into precious metals like gold or silver. He wrote an important essay on swords, the qualities of iron, and the processes of steel fusion.

Al-Kindi's thought

CALLIGRAPHY

He was fascinated by the beauty of the written word, and the caliph al'Mutawakkil employed him as a calligrapher. In fact, Al-Kindi was the one to introduce Indian numerals into the Islamic world.

CRYPTOLOGY

Al-Kindi was a pioneer in cryptanalysis and cryptography. He is credited with developing a method by which the frequency of letter occurrence can be analyzed and used to break a code (cryptanalysis through frequency analysis). This is detailed in a recently rediscovered manuscript found in an Ottoman archive in Istanbul

Al-Kindi's thought

MEDICINE

• There are more than thirty treatises attributed to al-Kindi in the field of medicine, where he was mainly influenced by the ideas of Galen.
• His most significant work in this field is probably 'De Gradibus,' in which he applies mathematics to medicine, particularly to pharmacology. For instance, he develops a mathematical scale to quantify the potency of drugs and a system, based on the phases of the moon, allowing a physician to anticipate the most critical days for patients' illnesses.

MUSIC

• During the early times of Islam, music was considered a branch of philosophy and mathematics.
• He was the first great theoretician of music: he suggested a detailed fretting for the 'ud, and discussed the cosmological connotations of music.
• Al-Kindí was also the first to realise the therapeutic value of music, he in fact tried to cure a quadriplegic boy using musical therapy

Kalam

It is the Islamic theology which was established in an attempt to understand faith and religion by logical reasoning (rational proof and evidence) instead of relying on revealed text.

The first page of the manuscript 'On the Deciphering of Encrypted Messages' by al-Kindi, containing the earliest known description in history of frequency analysis applied to cryptanalysis.